Slothfulness

Sometime that fall, the seams enclosing the bud on the orchid finally broke open. The flower did not bud, but the rich burgundy color peeked out of its green home hopeful.

Each time I was in the Nutjob's office I stared at that flower and wondered at its slothlike progress. I felt a certain kind of kinship with it, though I did not feel so hopeful. Rather, I felt as if I'd fallen into a well and everything around me was black and depressing. I carried my well everywhere I went and infected everyone else with my darkness.

I lost the cute outfits and high heels. They did not make me feel any better about my craptastic job and the effort that went into dressing each morning was exhausting.

I stopped taking advantage of the packets of instant chai deliciousness when I found out each hot cup of it was 120 calories. 120 calories! Good grief, early on I was drinking as many as three a day!

I stopped bothering to arrive early and started to arrive 5 minutes late ... 10 minutes late ... 15 minutes late. It was winter. It was cold. Scraping windshields is a bother. The Nutjob did not seem to care.

I made an executive decision to stop calling committee members to alert them of canceled meetings. If they were stupid enough to miss the email stating the meeting was canceled and the Outlook Cancellation of the meeting then they were, well, stupid. Besides, I never got anything but voicemails and confused secretaries taking the message and telling me it wasn't on their calendar anyway. There were so many canceled meetings and so much disinterest that people assumed our ship was sinking prior to its actual sinking.

The Nutjob stopped lecturing about the bits and pieces of the mothership-conglomerate. Now she said things like, "Even if they close our department, they'll keep us because they still have to get the work done no matter what." I felt like saying, "What work? There is no work, you nutjob!" I could only dream that they would lay me off, I would have even volunteered!

Perhaps the strangest turn of events was that the Nutjob started to ask me if I had anything for her to do.

I'll allow a moment for that to sink in.

Was I in Bizarre-O World? Who worked for who here? It was a baffling moment. Perhaps at some point I'd done enough to prove to her that I was not the idiot she proclaimed me to be. Or perhaps she was as bored as I was and tired of sitting at a desk for hours each day killing time.

I knew I was in trouble when I started to actually picture myself killing time. Typically these fantasies involved a butcher knife and an angry look on my face. I'd stab clocks and desks and conference phones and printed agendas.

A gentleman within our department started to acknowledge my boredom. He'd tell me, "Hang in there. It's going to get better. You'll be able to start using that communications background of yours soon. We'll need you to coordinate schedules and meetings for all these new committees and that's really going to keep you busy."

I didn't have a communications background, but that seemed highly irrelevant so I didn't mention it. It's not like it's necessary to schedule meetings, order food for meetings, create agendas for meetings, or make photocopies for meetings.

Stick a fork in me and call me done. This was my life and this was my craptastic job.

I was moving in slow motion, just like the orchid.

My mom would call and say, "You need to find a way to be happy." I knew she was right, but I couldn't see another life. I needed a job and in our current economy they're a bit hard to come by. I knew I could find another secretary job (that may or may not have included a nutjob), but that wasn't the point. I was tired of being a secretary. I'd spent nine years as an administrative assistant which is nothing more than a glorified secretary, but at least I didn't have to be called a secretary which only conjured thoughts of ordering food and taking meeting minutes.

I'd done everything I was supposed to in order to better my life, my position, my career, and instead I had taken two steps back. I had been better off as an admin because at least that job came with more responsibility and respect than this Secretary III one came with. If this was all my college degree had got me, why had I even bothered?

These thoughts consumed me when two things happened that made me realize I could not go on like I was.

One morning driving to my craptastic job, I had the strong desire to turn the car around and go home. I didn't have the desire to go home for the day, but to go home forever. Not to call them and say I was sick, but to never show up again. I knew it was crazy and that I had to go to work because I needed a paycheck and it was what I'd always done. I'd never quit a job like that before and couldn't do it now, but the feeling got stronger as I pulled into the parking lot and turned off the car. I sat there a moment and thought, "You're an idiot. You know you have to go in there," so I opened the door and started walking.

To say the walk was difficult is an understatement. I felt like I'd been given a pair of cement boots from someone on the Sopranos and was walking against a gale force wind that only I knew existed. I thought, "This is not what you're supposed to be doing. Going in there is going against nature and you need to turn around and go home," but I didn't. I leaned into the wind, lifted my heavy feet, and kept on going.

It did not get better once inside the building. I sat down at my desk and was about to burst into tears when I felt the Nutjob's hand on my shoulder. Why the touching? Always the touching! It creeped me out. Sometimes she'd give me a big, hard "Whack!" on the shoulder like we were in the locker room after a basketball game. I hated it. I answered her question, she left, and I found I couldn't cry.

I emailed my friend and said that it felt like the hand of God was pushing me back saying, "DON'T GO IN THERE!" Was this a figurative feeling? A literal one? I really didn't know if it was my soul crying for mercy or what, but my friend responded that perhaps I'd better listen.

I was considering this when the following day, a second thing happened which sealed my fate.

But I'll leave that until tomorrow.

Have you ever had a moment when it felt as if you were living the wrong life? As if you were going against your fate and had made an awful derailment somewhere?